Classifying depression as an illness serves the psychiatric community and pharmaceutical corporations well; it also soothes the frightened, guilty, indifferent, busy, sadistic, and unschooled. To understand depression as a call for life-changes is not profitable....

It’s an unfortunate word, ‘depression’, because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It’s when your old personality has left town...